Baseball Hall of Famer Cal Ripken Jr. still a big draw 14 years after retirement

When Cal Ripken Jr. was a young player for the Baltimore Orioles, he thought that when signing autographs, he could make more people happier if he signed faster. But that made his signature sloppy and hard to read.

Around that same time, he and his wife were looking for a house in Baltimore for their young family. On one visit, they were touring a house that was still inhabited and furnished.

Cal went in to the kid’s room of the house to take a look around and noticed a baseball displayed on the boy’s dresser. On the ball was the signature “Cal Ripken Jr.”

The drama pitting the Institute for Advanced Study against the Friends of Princeton Battlefield reached a critical point two weeks ago when the D & R Canal Commission, which a few days before rendered a decision failing to approve the institute’s housing development in the Battlefield area, reversed course and approved the application based on a change of vote by one member, a state employee.

Maureen McGovern is bringing her tribute to female singer-songwriters to New Hope
MAUREEN McGovern was performing at an AIDS benefit in San Francisco several years ago, an event that also featured fellow singer Helen Reddy, a contemporary of Ms. McGovern’s during the 1970s.

After 9/11, Ms. Reddy — the “Queen of ‘70s Pop” as she was known during that decade — quit performing for a time and returned to her native Australia, where she became a licensed hypnotherapist.

The San Francisco benefit would be Ms. Reddy’s first time back performing on stage in a while.